Desperation Doesn't Look Good on You
by obscureshadows
Summary: She didn't need to try to be beautiful. She was already as gorgeous as a person could humanly be. So why did she try so hard? Only one person could see her beauty on the inside.


Disclaimer: Anything in this fanfiction that seems familiar obviously doesn't belong to me. Now I will go cry in my room because I don't own the Harry Potter franchise. (If I did, I wouldn't have stopped at seven books.)

* * *

Society had changed her forever, and not necessarily in a positive way. She was no longer the innocent girl who left her home for school at the age of eleven. She wasn't the naive child that asked her father why boys were so stupid all the time. She was definitely not the girl who looked at the glass half full any longer. Only a few people seemed to notice the slight change in her attitude, her almost unnoticeable turn towards a more pessimistic perspective.

* * *

It all started the day she left for school. At school she learned that people won't always stand up for you. The oddest of people would bash you, whether it was your brother, your cousin, or your supposed best friend. She learned that it doesn't matter how you act, only what you wore and how many boyfriends you had in a week. This view towards life didn't agree with her. Like her mother, she was known for her incredible intelligence, her amazing ability to comprehend things, but this was an idea she just couldn't get herself to understand.

She prided herself for this ability, and considered herself to be original, special, different. Nobody had told her that being different would earn you the title of loser, or weirdo. No one had bothered to inform her that being smart meant nothing.

Slowly slipping down the social ladder, she found herself desperate. Desperate enough to change her ways. Her glasses vanished, replaced with unnoticeable contact lenses. She saved her money from summer jobs and redid her wardrobe. She stole her mother's makeup and packed it with her when she left for school once again. She learned beauty spells from a worn book from the library late into the night. She was changed. Her past - forgotten. Everyone seemed to disregard the fact that she indeed was the same girl who was a nerd, just a year before. None of that mattered anymore.

Any trace of individuality seemed to vanish with the arrival of newfound popularity. Occasionally, she dared to wonder how her life would have turned out had she kept her ways the same, had she not changed. The future seemed unimaginable. This was the new and improved Rose Weasley, the old Rosie had disappeared.

Everyone clearly thought that Rose was better off looking like a refined supermodel, and acting like a bitch. Everyone except Scorpius Malfoy. Her best friend since the first day of term when he let her sit on the Hogwarts Express with him. He loved her infectious smile. He had thought her constant chattering was endearingly annoying. Her red frizzy hair beautiful. Her bright blue eyes mesmerizing. But he hated the girl she had turned into, and was now. He knew that the old Rose had to be somewhere under all those layers of makeup. He missed the old Rose, the Rose that her had fallen in love with.

Scorpius had tried everything to change Rose's attitude, and tried to mold her back into that fun-loving girl he used to know. Everything failed as Rose seemed absolutely hell-bent on not giving up this new outlook of hers. She didn't care what anyone said. After all, why should they care about her? It's not like they actually cared or anything. That's where she was sadly mistaken. As much as it seemed that she was alone in life, and that her decisions didn't influence anyone, it wasn't true. Her old friends, the ones that didn't care how she looked missed her inexplicably. They didn't and never had cared how Rose looked. They loved her for her outgoing, straightforward attitude and bubbly personality.

Through the rest of their years in Hogwarts, Scorpius insisted on continuing to persist to find the old Rose again. The lost Rose. He tried everything. Talking to her, writing her notes, telling her jokes, making her laugh. Nothing seemed to be able to break through that impenetrable facade she put up. She shied away from any form of affection, and seemed to constantly adhere to that cold demeanor she adopted when she realized she didn't fit in. Now, nothing could get past her guard. Her days were now filled with mindless head nodding and tight smiles. The thought, the aspiration of perfection was her only goal now.

Nothing worked. All of his plans and ideas to retrieve Rose from her Queen Bee spot back to the bumblebee she was before, had failed. Once they left school, Scorpius finally realized that sometimes, you have to learn to give up. To accept defeat, and to move on with life. This fact was especially hard for Scorpius to accept, but after years of tirelessly working towards an impossible goal, he gave in. He stopped trying to "fix" her, to make her the fun loving, beautiful, happy person she was before. He stopped telling her that the only person she needed to please in life was herself, that no one else really mattered. It was over. All he left behind when he left to start his life over again, was one note, sent to Rose Weasley.

* * *

"Desperation doesn't look good on you." It wasn't signed, yet when Rose found it she knew exactly who had written it. The only person that truly and honestly understood her. The boy she loved with all her heart. The boy she had ignored, trying to make herself a different person. The person that found a way to shatter that barrier she put up between her and the rest of the world. All the walls came crashing down, in that second that she read that note. From that moment onward, Rose Weasley was officially back. And the first thing she went to do was to go find Scorpius Malfoy, and apologize.


End file.
